Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Jade heaved another heavy box of haphazard papers onto the table in the open space of the archives room.
It was the second day of her punishment from Matherson.
She’d been in the archives from sunup to sundown with only meal breaks, sorting the most recent files, pieces of evidence, meeting notes, and the like into their respective crates for archival.
While not backbreaking labor—though Jade’s stiff back had screamed in relief when she had stretched out in bed after a full day hunched over boxes—it was menial, tiresome, and beneath her rank.
Matherson’s choice of punishment had been thoughtfully selected and personal, a task that might make Jade go insane.
Her work in the archives had given her an abundance of time for reflection, however. Jade lost herself in her thoughts as her hands moved automatically, sorting papers box by box.
No note had come from Nicolas, and quite honestly, Jade was surprised.
She couldn’t fathom why he’d fallen completely silent after the last night they had spent together.
Though he’d been quiet for this long before.
He must have been busy, working on things within the conflict behind the scenes, but what was there to do after Marchand’s death?
She couldn’t help but believe something with Nicolas was brewing and she would see him again soon.
He always knew too much, more than he should have had access to.
He’d never given her a clear answer as to how he gathered it all either.
Cold trickled down Jade’s spine and made her shiver.
Eventually, she pushed thoughts of Nicolas aside and turned her mind to Lord Marchand’s last moments.
She’d lost track of how many times she’d replayed the chandelier falling from the ballroom ceiling of Evenshold Palace and crushing Marchand.
He’d been in their custody, accused of organizing the murders of so many, including the man in whose home they stood, and then he was gone.
Jade remembered how he’d argued against them, as any guilty party would to save their own skin.
I haven’t possessed them in years, and I don’t intend to cultivate them again.
But they would never know if he’d been lying, not truly. If Marchand hadn’t possessed either of the plants, how had they been present in his greenhouse?
The hair on the back of Jade’s neck prickled at the memory of finding first firra, then morsbane in the greenhouse.
She’d only found one of each plant—which, arguably, was all it took to make the poison rienevoir—and they hadn’t been hidden well at all.
In a time such as this, when people were being killed with a poison made from those two plants, Jade couldn’t fathom why Marchand wouldn’t have done a better job of hiding them in his greenhouse.
There was a possible explanation. Marchand had likely recently used them to create the poison that killed Grannam and had hastily returned them to random places on the shelves.
That might also explain the fresh, loose soil in the pot with firra.
But that still didn’t sit right with Jade.
If Marchand was involved in such a plot, she imagined the man was smart enough to hide critical evidence better than that.
Jade returned the papers she had been sorting to the top of the box and left the table, an idea hatching.
She’d come across a stack of order forms the military had obtained the day before for plants from Ferryman’s placed by Lord Marchand.
All she’d done at the time was mindlessly file them away, the higher-ups in the military having confirmed the order forms provided no useful information before sending them to the archives for sorting.
But now . . . Now she wanted to check something.
Jade wound through the shelves of the archives, the electric lights hanging overhead buzzing in the otherwise silent room, until she arrived at the crate she sought. She pulled it from its place and dropped it to the floor right there, quickly locating the file in question.
Holding the file open in one hand, Jade used the other to sift through the stack of order forms from Ferryman’s dating back years.
Marchand had clearly developed a relationship with the plant nursery.
Though he had purchased from other places as well in his time cultivating plants, the Ferryman’s stack was the thickest and went back the farthest.
Nowhere in the orders did Jade find the purchase of either morsbane or firra. She went back chronologically, having personally sorted the slips by date, reaching seven, eight, nine years prior. Still nothing.
She’d grown so used to seeing nothing of interest on the order forms that she nearly missed the plant names written on a yellowed piece of paper, flipping to the next slip before going back.
Jade’s hand stilled on the purchase order, dated over eleven years ago.
A single unit of morsbane and a single unit of firra were listed among other plants.
“So he was telling the truth—about that, at least,” she murmured under her breath. Marchand had last purchased the plants over a decade before, which corroborated his statement in the ballroom. “But why one of each, and never again?”
Jade made note of the date at the top.
Eleven years ago . . .
Something else struck her as having happened eleven years ago—the information Arabella had uncovered about something her father had done around the same time.
The act that had turned her against him and motivated her to seek the throne ahead of her time.
Something horrible enough to make her want to keep her father from power.
Jade’s mind whirred as her heartbeat slowly accelerated. The events had to be connected. There was no way they weren’t.
But if that was the case, it meant the military had missed something big from the time. Missed, or locked down. Could there be a crate in these archives with information that connected the dots?
Jade replaced the paper in its file, preparing to return it to the crate and back to the shelf, but something else at the top of the slip caught her eye.
The order was made by “Sir Robert Marchand.” No other title.
Jade flipped through the next few until she found one for Lord Marchand, the Earl of Southbury. Three months later.
Her mouth went dry. The timing of Marchand receiving his earldom couldn’t have been a coincidence.
Eleven years ago.
Jade had a hunch, but she couldn’t be certain until she checked the date. She put the crate of evidence in its place on the shelf and found her way to a section of meeting notes. Going back in the records eleven years, she pulled down a box to start her search.
Was that really eleven years ago?
She would have been thirteen. That seemed about right. Her mother was still alive at the time.
Jade’s heart ramped up to a full hammering as her trembling fingers rifled through the pages of notes. Her eyes sought keywords associated with the event, finally landing on something that might be useful. She scanned over the notes from a meeting headed by, at the time, Commander Devereaux.
The death of both the queen and the prince is truly a tragedy, one that this kingdom will not soon heal from.
Our king has not only lost his beloved wife and son, he now has no heir.
Prince Artis was well into his training to one day rule our kingdom, and it was already clear he would make an excellent king when the time came.
Instead, our country now lacks both its future king and its direction.
This loss of security will undoubtedly spell an unstable time in our kingdom.
It is up to us now more than ever to assure the citizens of Marran that the kingdom is secure, stable, and safe.
In my time working with the king, along with the queen and prince, I have grown close with them and know our king is strong and resilient.
He will make it through this, in time. I pledge myself to work with him in these next uncertain weeks and months as the royal family navigates this tragedy and looks toward an unknown future.
We will announce the date and time of the funeral as soon as we are made aware of the arrangements. Remains of both the queen and prince were recovered from the fire, so they can be properly laid to rest in the family tomb. All active duty officers will be required to attend.
Jade skimmed over the rest of the notes, but she’d already read what was most important.
Eleven years ago, Queen Cosette and Prince Artis had perished in a fire at their country home while on holiday.
King Mervyn had been too occupied with his duties as king to go with them, and a good thing too, or else he might have been lost to the fire also.
Even with the confirmation that the tragedy had occurred eleven years ago, Jade had trouble connecting it to Reynauld or Marchand. Arabella had written that her father had been responsible for something eleven years ago. Responsible for what? The fire?
Jade’s heart jumped for only a moment at the possibility that Reynauld might have been involved, but she brushed off the idea as quickly as it had come.
The two prevailing theories were that the fire was either an accident or was set by a group of magic-wielders trying to end the king’s line.
Jade knew from her studies that Reynauld had in fact been touring a new military base at the time.
In fact, he’d learned of the fire and the deaths of his brother’s wife and son while on base.
So what had he been responsible for, then?
Something to do with their memorial? Had he been involved in recovering or identifying their bodies and had mishandled the situation?
Perhaps he had suggested Mervyn stay behind at the castle, and Arabella believed that if the king had gone, the fire would have been prevented or the queen and prince would have been saved.